When Does Anything Matter?
Is it even worth it to create something for less than a million followers?
Over the weekend, I was in Sioux Falls for the Art Collective. You probably didn’t know I was even there because I haven’t published a Brimstone News update in a long time. This is the internet, I post to Substack, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, TikTok, the Brimstone site and Patreon. It’s a lot. But, as the hosts of Citation Needed always say, “This is the internet and that’s how it works now.”
On top of creating new content for Substack every week, copy and pasting content to the banal socials, and keeping my home bases up to date, I also upload new content to Webtoon, Tapas, and GlobalComix weekly. I get exhausted staring at a screen and repeating certain processes, especially posting my content in oodles of places. To me, “content” is becoming a dirty word. The internet is riddled with senseless slop and attention draining crap that is also called “content.” I’m trying to put out things I care about in a way that provides me value more than subscribers going up, even if that makes making those numbers go up harder than might be sustainable.
If I go back a decade to when I was starting out, I remember hearing ad nauseum that I needed a newsletter. “Every successful artist has a newsletter,” is something I heard — and you’ll hear — at workshops and professional development conferences over the years. I had a Mailchimp newsletter, like all the other artists. I subscribed to artist newsletters, especially speaking artists. What I found is that, not unlike a Walmart, the vast majority of artist newsletters I subscribed to were largely gallery opening dates or sales announcements. It’s cool to know when things are happening, sure. But I tend to buy things when I want to buy them. Coupons hardly affect me. Coupons go on a fridge for two months, then go in the trash.
I’m not arguing my innocence, though. I’ve shared coupons and sales, too. Of course, I want you to know when something is on sale! I unsubscribed from most of these artist newsletters eons ago. There are a few that keep me hanging on, though. The ones that kept me had more to say. Several of these talk process. A popular format is to share how work gets made. Most of these include videos and how to’s. It’s all very PBS, and not very me. It’s also all a lot more challenging for me when it comes to doing something with one hand and holding a phone in the other. However, it was seeing these newsletters that I hung onto, paired with the style of podcasts I liked making in the mid 2010’s that made way for Fighting the Good Fight as you read it today.
I think the thing that sets me apart is the sense that I’m right here, in it with you. I don’t have a million followers on any one platform. Here, on Substack, there’s about 250 readers receiving this newsletter in their inbox. My ultimate goal is that each entry gives them some insight into working independently, living as an artist, and a lesson in sticktoitiveness.
But, does it even matter at 250 readers? A lot of Substacks have 1000 readers, or 25,000, or more. In the grand scheme of the internet 250 followers, or subscribers, or whatever your favorite platform wants to call its users, is often considered nothing. How many of you have stood in a room with the attention of 250 people before? That’s approximately the size of a full movie theater. That’s not nothing.
When does any of this matter? When does the patron count on Patreon matter? When does the readership of a webcomic make it matter? When does a message in a newsletter like this matter? How many subscribers do I need to matter? Maybe the size of a movie theater doesn’t matter when we’re comparing ourselves to two million subscriber YouTube accounts.
In this circumstance, I try to remind myself of two things: 1) Steady growth is always more reliable than rapid growth, 2) Someone is always reading.
Steady Growth
I’ve been on diets before. For easily as long as I’ve cared about my online presence, I have been consumed with my wellness and physical appearance. I’ve experienced rapid weight loss, and the rollercoaster that is regaining most of that weight. Managing our bodies lasts our whole lives. We cannot afford to treat it without grace and a measured endurance.
Followers and readership is a lot like physical wellness. Sometimes, when I’m at events, I get a huge number of new subscribers. Eventually, I see several of them fall off. While I could scramble to keep that number skyrocketing by pumping out generalized slop that algorithms love the same way I could push further into an extreme diet, it’s not genuine or fulfilling. Instead of focusing on those followers that drop off, I try to look at why the ones who hung on, well… hung on.
Maybe I lost someone because the first post they got was about atheism. Or, maybe they got their free font and bounced. Those who hung on, however, hung on through a post about atheism. They kept reading through posts about victory, loss, defeat, or getting back up. Those are the people that do take something of value from these entries.
Someone is Always Reading
To say my first webcomic comic was amateurish would be an understatement. But, it was my first webcomic. I was jumping in head first without even an inkling of what I was doing. It was a pure Buffy rip off with android human/animal hybrids called Little Alice. 2012 did offer platforms like Webtoon, so I ran Alice on Wordpress and it’s no longer available. (I’ve moved beyond that anyhow.)
I had a fairly toxic relationship between myself, a few friends, and Little Alice. I struggled to gain readership. They were highly critical of the comic At a time in which all that concerned me was that my analytics went up. If the readership stagnated, or slumped, then I assumed I was doomed. Admittedly, it’s still easy to fall into those traps of thinking everything is over when things slow down. However, these friends urged me to end Alice. The sentiment was that no one was reading it, no one cared, and they didn’t care. I wasn’t making it for me anymore and I stopped.
Several months after abandoning the project, I received an email from a reader. The reader had spent time in a hospital and found my comic while laid up in his hospital room. The weekly release gave him something to look forward to. This reader knew the first story in what I assumed would be my life’s work was nearing an end. He wanted to know how that ended. I gushed at this guy in a reply thread I wish I still had. I told him I had several finished pages I could upload, and about twenty left to draw. I saw Alice to a proper ending for one reader because they reached out.
For me it’s hard not to say that one reader, one subscriber, one follower, doesn’t matter. I think it’s important we put into perspective what 250 readers looks like, or what 1,100 Instagram followers would look like in a room! I’m not slouching on likes because people don’t like my content. A lot of times the algorithm is the enemy on social media. Watching a new webcomic steadily grow feels so different than it did thirteen years ago. And, when it comes to newsletters, I know I’m offering something of value. Not everyone has the same time to read, or right words to comment, or send replies. But the people who do make every entry worth more than the last.
When does anything matter? It matters right now.
(I should remember that with the Brimstone News)
Today’s Tune
Hey! If you sincerely read this far, please consider becoming a member of the Brimstone Order over on Patreon. It keeps the lights on here at Brimstone Studios.
Phil always says every comic is someone’s first comic and I think about that a lot.
With all the events going on in our country it can seem like does my art matter? I think it is more important now than it has ever been. Like I’m launching a kickstarter tonight and I just feel odd asking for money when everyone is broke.